Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Quotes
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Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.
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At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.
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One must not hope to be more than one can be.
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Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.
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Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought.
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Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians -- lack of power to pronounce the syllable, "No." To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only means to preserve one's freedom and one's character.
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In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.
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Life is a malady in which sleep soothes us every sixteen hours; it is a palliation; death is the remedy.
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Though we best know and cannot deny our imperfections, it is not for us to lose our self-reliance and true manhood.
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Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.
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It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.
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Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.
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All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.
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Vain is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is.
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It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.
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The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.
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Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.
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Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns amongst the stupid.
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It is commonly supposed that the art of pleasing is a wonderful aid in the pursuit of fortune; but the art of being bored is infinitely more successful.
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In great matters, men behave as they are expected to; in little ones, as they would naturally
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We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.
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The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.
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Wicked people sometimes perform good actions. I suppose they wish to see if this gives as great a feeling of pleasure as the virtuous claim for it.
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It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.